The yin and yang of being a grandparent

Rylin applying pretend suntan

lotion on my face.

I love my granddaughter Rylin, who’s now just short of 2 years old.

Who wouldn’t love the smiles, the laughs, the hand-holding, the cuddling and the smooches that this little girl gives?

I recently caught up with Rylin, her mom Kelsey and my wife Jane at a small farm up the road from the house so that we could see the farm animals and pick out some pumpkins together..

I was getting out of my car as she was being taken out of her mom’s car and she toddled up to me, her little legs pumping, and gave my legs a big hug. Who wouldn’t love a grandchild like that, right?

But Rylin is making me sick.

For real, she, on occasion, makes me ill.

With the joys of being a grandparent come the challenges as well. And one challenge so far is dealing with whatever illness, plague or pestilence Rylin might bring home from daycare.

If Rylin in these scenarios is Patient Zero, then her immediate family - Kelsey, Dad Jeremy and new baby brother Bradley - are in the most direct line of fire. We grandparents come next.

Right now, we’re dealing with a one-two punch of a cold and conjunctivitis.

The cold, frankly, could have come from anywhere, but I’m pretty confident I can pin the conjunctivitis on my little Patient Zero.

Conjunctivitis, for those who haven’t had the pleasure, is also known as pinkeye, an inflammation of the conjunctiva, the thin clear tissue that lies over the white part of the eye and lines the inside of the eyelid. Red, itchy eyes, teariness and (my favorite part) yellow discharge that gets pretty crusty once it dries are among the symptoms.

The cure, we learned from Kelsey, is applying Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo, the no tears formula, directly to the eyeball using a Q-Tip. By the way, used in this fashion, there will be tears.

I am no good at being sick. I make a bad patient because I have no patience for being ill. I’ve got places to go, people to see, things to do, even as a working retired.

Could I have prevented it? Perhaps, if I follow rules of washing/disinfecting hands frequently, especially around the people you know are sick.

But what am I going to do: Tell Rylin to wait so Pepere can wash her and my hands before she gives me a hug and a kiss? I’ll risk it. It’s just one of the hazards of a great job.

Too much sitting on my lazy angst

I’ve been a bad, bad Boomer about my angst.

I haven’t written in this space for weeks.

I can chalk it up to a number of factors: being busy with other things, both professional and personal, and being just plain lazy about getting these words on paper (or words online, as the case may be).

I’ve learned, in the almost five years since I retired from my newspaper job, that my priorities about being retired and working - working retired -- haven’t changed all that much.

I prioritize my day and my freelance work according to an earnings hierarchy: The best paying jobs have the highest priority, the lesser-paying jobs have mid-level priority, and the no-paying work have the least priority.

Writing my Boomer Angst falls into the no-paying category.

And sandwiched in there -- in a rambling, no-set-criteria kind of way -- is my need to just load the car with the gear necessary to spend some time skiing or at the beach surfing or playing golf or just traveling to change the scenery.

It’s not that there isn’t some angst to write about.

I’m approaching my 60th birthday, and I’ve been processing the idea of being 60 years old more heavily than I did at 30 or 40 or 50.

Sixty, when I was 20 and 30, seemed old. It’s not helped by the fact that my Dad started falling into failing health in his 60s, dying at 64 from a respiratory ailment. (Thank goodness my Mom is still chugging away at 87 plus to convince me -- rightly or wrongly -- that I have her longevity genes.)

At 60, I don’t perceive myself as being old, but perception, as we know, can be illusion. We Baby Boomers tell ourselves that 60 is the new 50. But, in fact, 60 is 60 no matter how much of a time warp you might want to try to create.

 Issues of physical and mental health carry more weight

Why is it, for example and speaking of weight, did I gain a lot of the weight back that I lost a couple of years ago? My diet didn’t change appreciably. My exercise regimen didn’t change. Is my metabolism, like an old furnace, just not burning the fuel the way it used to?

And why is it that my 7 iron results in only about 100 yards on the gold course when it used to produce 120 yards? I feel fit, but am I getting less flexible as I get a little more achy in the joints?

Fortunately, there are many, many more positives these days to approaching 60 to counterweight any agnst..

My wife and I are happy empty nesters who revel in the opportunities to come and go, travel to and fro.

My daughter and her husband are looking for a house to buy.

My son is happily engaged in wonderful work at Columbia University.

My stepdaughter is pregnant with child No. 2 while her daughter (granddaughter Rylin) is the source of endless amusement (and the occasional bug du jour that happens to be going around her daycare).

In sum, everyone that I care about is doing just fine.

Every age has to be tempered by attitude. My attitude at 60, while contemplative, is upbeat.

Once a dad, always a dad

My most recent picture of my children,

taken in May at David's graduation from

a master's program at Columbia.

I love being a dad.

And I love being a granddad.

My celebration of Father’s Day will be with a cookout with family on Saturday evening.

My daughter will be there, visiting from Connecticut. My stepdaughter Kelsey will be there with granddaughter Rylin. My son, David, is in Washington, D.C., and can’t make it, and the other stepchildren (Patrick, Eileen and Reilly) too are scattered about right now.

My celebration will include a toast skyward to my own dad, who I hope knows how much he has contributed to my richness of being a dad.

Of late, I’ve fallen into certain familiar dad patterns with Rylin, almost six months old, that I did with Elizabeth, my oldest, now 28.

I call Rylin “Goose” and “Munchkin” and “Pumpkin” in the same way I would Elizabeth. It’s no wonder Rylin looks at me with quizzical eyes, as if to ask:”Just who does this guy think I am anyway?”

Of all the things Rylin is, she is not “Scoot.” That was, is and forever shall be reserved for Elizabeth.

I love being a dad because I find the kids interesting. They’re engaging and wonderful company. They’re very smart, and they make me feel much smarter than I actually am. It’s an osmosis thing.

I’ve separated myself enough from the day-to-day chores of being a dad.

It’s been a long time since Elizabeth or David needed to be changed or fed, prodded to finish a fifth grade school project, driven to karate or gymnastics practice, or reminded to make safe, responsible decisions about going to prom.

They’re full-fledged adults, making full-fledged decisions about life, love and the pursuit of happiness.

But that doesn’t mean the elements of being a dad end. I worry - mostly in silence, sometimes out loud about this or that. And I miss them.

Elizabeth is great about calling once a week. If the phone rings at 7 o’clock in the morning, I know it’s her. And David and I play chess -- via text messages that keep us touch by 140 characters or fewer with each exchange.

But sometimes the regular phone calls and texted chess moves aren’t enough; it requires getting in a car or on a train to see them, to give them a hug and a kiss, to view them in the environments they’ve created for themselves.

Here’s to being a dad -- to what it was then, to what it is today, to what it will be in the years ahead.